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 Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:47 pm
Simon had called them useless and brash, and in all honesty, the severe assertion had been correct. She hadn't asked to be in charge, hadn't anticipated being given the leadership position for two people dead on their feet and a girl whose innocence shined around her like a halo.
Hadn't anticipated routine turning into terror, a horseman who had decided to turn her ragtag band of followers into pawns.
The darkness that swallowed her had been a welcome respite from the distress simmering underneath the surface, burbling rage threatening to boil over and yawning silence threatening to consume her.
So she dreamt.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:54 pm
The shadows had not been anything unusual. Clerise dreamt of darkness and sweeping shadows, furling at the ends like curled ringlets, trailing around her toes as she wandered through the void. Inky black tendrils licked at her heels as though they were flames, slowing her progression.
"Hello," she breathed, and never had anything sounded so quiet, a whisper into no noise, an echo swallowed by infinite black.
She knew, in theory, that it was a dream. Nowhere in the world would be so dark, not with the blinding white light that emanated from her chest, a one woman beacon guiding herself through the dim.
For the last two months, her dreams had been watched, her subconscious mind haunted by the presence of a what was once a man.
He was gone, now. Sea salt and warm breezes vanished, the rustling of cloaks and finery gone silent.
The lilting, husky voice of a thing that occupied her head-space refusing to speak.
Clerise made her way upwards, towards a shadowed blue moon above, so dark that it was barely distinguishable against the starless fabric of the night.
There was an...odd sort of anticipation in her chest. The sort of feeling prompted by a violin's note cut short, the air thrumming with what once was, silence wrapping around her like a vice.
It felt eternal.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:14 pm
Perhaps it was metaphorical, this journey. Clerise's bare toes dipped into cool sand, and then into briny waters-- but there was no sound.
She was on the set of a silent movie, and it appeared that she was its sole star, no other signs of life around. And yet, she remained calm, in a detached sort of way.
It was common fare for her subconscious to subject her to, though more so in the past than in the present. It was a welcome reprieve from violent imagery, of the sight of her new-found friends dying in imaginative ways.
In some dreams, they perished at her hands, gauntlet clad hands squeezing the life out of them, her weight heavy on their chests.
She held them down until they died, and the last mission had nearly been a literal translation of her nightmares. How was she to look at Rep, who had stood up to fight after she had fallen? How was she to look Sasha in the eye and not at the dark wounds that covered her neck, dark wounds against lily white skin? How could she look at Marcus, who she had specifically ordered to stand down?
Up to her knees in the water that moved without splashing, rolling over her legs as Clerise made her way to the barely distinguishable winding stairs up to the moon, the landscape dark and fuzzy.
The waves rose against her, swallowing her whole, the undertow threatening to consume her, the light around her head flickering.
Chilled to the bone, she continued, driven by a need she could not comprehend.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:35 pm
Her feet touched slippery rock, relief flooding her heart like pins and needles. She was close, now. Step by agonizing step she scaled the shadowed staircase, the climb precarious and uneasy.
The way was slick, each cobblestone step covered in a fine film of algae. Pieces crumbled away as Clerise climbed upwards, each step bringing her closer and closer to the moon, its navy surface dull and flat.
It came with a disconcerting feeling, one that she couldn't comprehend. A feeling of displacement; the idea that nothing at all was in its right place. Slowly, as she drew closer to the zenith, Clerise's pace accelerated from a walk to a jog to a stumbling run.
Breathing was difficult as she traversed the surface of the moon, running over its flat surface, hunting. But for what, she didn't know.
Everything was wrong.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 7:03 pm
She ran for miles. Heart thudding in her chest, legs pumping, and still, nothing stirred on the surface. The chill seeped into her bones.
The dust was soft beneath her feet, fine grains flying up around her in a swirl of dust.
He wasn't here. Clerise hated him, in every sense of the word. He was cruel, callous, unyielding. Unbending in his opinions. Lusted for blood and FEAR alike, urging her to dominate every opponent on the battlefield if viable.
Whenever she made a decision, any decision, Balthazar seemed to disapprove, undermining her authority even in her own mind, trivializing every success, and blowing each and every one of her failures and faults out of proportion. He had been awful and intolerable, a constant presence in her mind ready to lash out like a viper.
And now he was gone, a silent void in its place. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, grief and panic descending on her in equal parts.
Slowly, Clerise sank to her knees, fingers scrabbling for purchase in the dark blue sand, sinking into it.
"Balthazar?" she breathed, voice hitching.
And again. And again.
Clerise tore herself free from the sinking sands with a yell, bleeding from any place that the moon's sands had touched, the crimson red swirling with blue to make a grotesque indigo stain, the colour spreading out at a rapid pace, the ground cracking everywhere it touched.
The moon was falling apart, and it was going to swallow her whole.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 7:16 pm
Clerise awoke from her slumber with a feral yell, thrashing blindly in her hospital bed. Blindly, she tore at the tangling cords around her arms, screaming, rage flowing into her.
How dare he leave her.
How dare he.
That little s**t thinks he can give me the silent treatment.
Clerise stumbled out of bed, her cries shifting into pain as soon as she put weight onto her wounded leg, knee buckling immediately. She hit the ground hard, palms and face smacking against the ground-- but it didn't stop her.
The distraught trainee lashed out again, tearing the monitoring pads off her chest, swiping out to knock over the table at her bedside, its contents topping everywhere as she did.
Through the pounding in her ears, Clerise heard yelling and familiar voices coming from outside her room. Strong but skinny arms hauled her upwards, even as she struggled to shove everything and everyone away.
A second set of arms wrapped around her neck like a vice, taking her back down onto the ground with a tackle, the cool pinch of a needle slid into her arm.
She saw Sunny's disapproving face sliding out of focus as the drugs took effect, heard the nurse's voice thank the young man that had tackled the patient for her, darkness taking over just moments after she was freed from it.
It was just as empty the second time around.
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